escapades of the elusive kat

hm.... by this time next week, I'll be in Taipei, waiting for my connecting flight to Austria! YES! I'm going to Austria again!! It's been 10 years since my last visit. I'm already confused by some of the new things going on, like, the Westbahnhof is not anymore the bahnhof to go to Linz and Salzburg. The Sudbahnhof has also been upgraded to become the Hauptbahnhof! So. Yeah. I've got a few key locations all marked and saved and then we can just go with the flow.

So today was the "Commemoration walk" for the "Upcoming Inauguration" of the "Macau Bridge". That entire sentence is made of a few jokes LOL. In Macau we used to have to one sole bridge connecting the Macau Peninsula to the Taipa Island. The bridge has an official name (Some Nobre Carvalho or something) but now we just call it the "Old Bridge". Then the second bridge built was called the "Friendship Bridge". I guess it was because it was just before the time of the Handover and so the Portuguese and Chinese were doing a series of "Friendship & Good relations" stuff, therefore it was called "Friendship". For a while the people commonly called it the "New Bridge". However, there is an area of Macau also colloquially known as "new bridge" 新橋 and while people will know what you are talking about (e.g. you won't go to the actual bridge for shopping) some people will tease in jest. And some years later, we got the new "Sai Van Bridge", which is probably because it starts off from the Sai Van area in Macau.

This spiffy new bridge that's going to go in operations on Tuesday, is called "The Macau Bridge" lol. I read somewhere that the name "Macau Bridge" was also submitted for consideration when tender was open for the Sai Van Bridge, but I guess this time it's political, or something. This newest bridge has been joked that: it's been built too quickly, it will collapse. They required people to register to walk this event, and the registration page basically died every step of the way. 1. It didn't go live when it was supposed to go live. 2. When it got resolved, people had to receive an SMS code to verify but people were stuck waiting for the SMS. 3. When it got resolved, people were still not able to registere due to server error. 4. When it got resolved, very soon the quota was full so people couldn't register. So, some actually joked that they needed to limit the number of people as the bridge would collapse. Oh, also, the bridge has disco shiney lights at night, so people call it the "Rainbow Bridge". Ooops.

So to commemorate the opening, we get to walk half way and back, because the area the bridge connects to "New City Zone A" 新城A區 (a reclaimed area intended for building housing) is actually not completed yet LOL. Tuesday is China National Day, so all these wee-waahs and hoo-haas (Horse and pony show?) is really to hype that up.

And have I mentioned the red flags in town LOL. Every single lamp post hangs 2 flags of China. Someone in a "foreigners" chat group I'm in posted a video of him saying "How many red flags does your relationship have?" LOL.

This year is gonna be a couple of big things because it's the 75th year of the PRC and the 25th year of the Macau Handover (Macau SAR Establishment Day).

I got interviewed by the news station, and even in the questions, they had to make it political.

- Why are you here? Well, this is new, and I thought it fun to have a walk over.
- What do you think of the weather today? Well, you can say it's a beautiful day but admittedly it's a little too sunny to be out in the open, but I've got an umprella.
- What do you think about having this commemoration walk 2 days before the actual inaugration? Yeah, it's a fun experience so I'm here.

Yeah, I totally not-answered the third question intentionally haha!

Ah, so my Panasonic LUMIX G died. hm... if I want to be really technical about it, the display monitor's dead. I can still switch the camera on. I can still take photos on it. I just couldn't see the photos or click on the menu and change the settings from the screen. I'd have to take the SD card out, connect it to the phone or computer then read the photos there. So... if I really had the patience, I could probably still use that camera. But in preparation of my upcoming trips, and seeing my Hong Kong Dollars account having some extra "fun hobby money", I decided to get myself a new camera. Nikon Zfc. Ugh. But the size of it is double that of my old one. And it's got a kazillion functions. The display and UI on the Nikon is vastly different and it's getting a little tough to get used to. The easiest UI I find on these cameras is on the Canon. Let's see if I can get used to the Nikon in these few weeks.

So far I've been mainly only using the automatic [A] setting and maybe the program [P] if there's a little more stuff I'd like to change. I still couldn't figure out where the control for the aperture and shutter speed are. I've found te exposure dial and after today's trip out I've gotten used to it.

Ah, don't preach to me that I can just read the user manual LOL. Who really reads the user manual? At least until there really is something to troubleshoot. I'm just gonna muck around the controls and see what is what and then get used to them.

Two nights ago, on the actual night of the "Mid Autumn Festival", people went out to light lanterns, have some kind of nighttime out door picnic and all that. I went up to the rooftop for some photo taking. I had a paper lantern too but it was too windy to take a good shot, and I hadn't figured out the best night time settings yet.

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Happy Sunday being a "Tourist" in town LOL.

So, on place and street names in Macau, it's a bit different from Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the English and Chinese names are direct translations. Say for example, Garden Street is 花園街 in Hong Kong. In Macau, it's usually chaos. I have the example of Jardim da Flora (Flora Garden) in Portuguese, and... in Chinese it is... 二龍喉公園 (2 dragon throats garden). Look at the entrance of this place. There's this wall fountain, with 2 dragon heads, and the sprout where water comes out (like faucet), is called 水喉, and so... 二龍喉


We decide to take probably the World's Shortest Cable Car Ride. (That probably took the longest of a couple of years to be fixed one time after a breakdown)


Old style cable car, no air con, being roasted alive.


There's actually quite a bit to see and do in this garden, but I didn't come here much before.I didn't explore this garden much. There's a nickname of "Monkey Garden" because there used to be monkeys in here. It had monkeys, some birds, and a black bear (Bobo, saved from a restaurant, passed away a couple years back), but it was never officially called a zoo. So, I don't really know what it is.


But, a lot of the enclosures are gone now, probably sent off to the main zoo in Coloane, and instead, there's space for kids for bikes, skates, and such.


Had to orient ourselves for a bit as I hadn't been here for over 20 years.


This was a fortress hill and such so there are 防空洞 which I just forgot the English name of... air raid shelter?


Here be fake cannons. I don't know where I read/heard about that, but I heard the cannons in Macau were used to make the bell in the Big Ben.


The typhoon signal signs. They hang this out when there is a typhoon.


Chapel and Lighthouse. The Lighthouse looks so short here.


No photos in the chapel, so I got this snapshot.


Oh yeah, I didn't say what we were doing. The Guia Lighthouse is usually closed but they've opened the lighthouse for public visit yesterday and today, so we went. There was a queue. A kid asked, "why is it the marine department handling this tower up on a hill?" Well kid, a lighthouse is for MARITIME travel, and so, it's under the responsibility of the marine department 海事及水務局


Requisite panoramic shot.


The lightbulb!


Skyline.


More skyline.


Height and beware of falling. My Sis got spooked and left very soon.


Another cannon.


Cross section of the lighthouse!


Some random photo taking LOL.


Some old photo exhibition in the raid shelter corridor. I remember back then when I was a kid this was off limits and it was spooky as heeeeeelllllllll


We screamed at this photo. "WOW! Look! A dog!"


Border Gate. Used to just be able to cross this arch and you were in China.


Took some time for us to understand where this was. It was just next to home.


Cable car ride down. That's the bird enclosure and I think I saw a peacock.


This is another example. This street is Avenida Coronel Mesquita, but in Chinese it's simply 石獅子 (Stone Lion) because... of the stone lions on this private property.

Just kidding, I will not write the whole post in Chinese LOL.

The title reads "Preparing for the (Chinese) New Year!"

So today is 年廿八, basically the "28th day of the 12th month". In Cantonese, there is a saying, 年廿八，洗邋遢 that means "spring cleaning" but word-for-word it's "cleaning up on the 28th" and practically, after this day, we shouldn't throw out rubbish anymore. But we don't really follow that religiously. The REAL day that we can't throw ANYTHING out is New Year's Day (this year it's on Sunday). So, you can't clean, can't dust, can't sweep, can't wash your hair, can't many things. I sometimes wonder if that means we shan't shower either, but anyway.

I've set up my desk in the office with candy (Kit Kats!) and two apples. Apparently, as apples are called 蘋果 (peng guo), and the 蘋 (peng) sounds similar to 平 (peng) in 平安 (peng on), so, 2 apples are like 平平安安 (peng peng on on). In simplified Chinese, you can even see the similarity of 平 (peng) and 苹 (peng of "apple").

That was some special Taiwan version Kit Kat that I placed an order back in November and arrived now. I figured I'd just place it on my desk.

My ex-Boss sometimes called me "Kit Kat" (because I'm known as Kat around at work) so I kind of picked up the habit of bringing Kit Kats to work. Also, Kit Kats are easy souvenirs from Japan because there are like a kazillion diffferent flavors. Japan likes Kit Kats because the way you read it キットカット means something like "must (or will) win!" And students "must win" (pass) in their exams.

In fact, I received this for my birthday, LOL! Variety Party Box with 21 flavors of Kit Kats, there are 63 individual packets! The other Kit Kat on top is the Japan Post "Year of the Rabbit" Greeting card postcard (post chocolate?) that my friend got me as a new year gift. In Japan, their "New Year" and their "Chinese zodiac animals" start on 1-January, but in China, it's during the Lunar New Year. But to be very SPECIFIC, it doesn't start on (Chinese) New Year's Day either, it starts on what is called the Lichun 立春 the first day of Spring.

So anyway. Tomorrow is officially the last day of work, at the end of the day we say 收爐! Which means "switching off the oven" (closing up the kitchen) and somehow the saying has been adopted by other industries as well, I have a reference link as well LOL. It's a 3-day public holiday, but since a day falls on a Sunday, we get a compensated day off, so it's back to work on Thursday. In mainland China and for Chinese culture, they usually close until the 7th day of the new year "人日" (everyone's birthday) and start work on the 8th day. And all Chinese New Year related festivities would finish by 元宵節 the 15th day which I think is also known as the Lantern Festival... and well, since I don't know much about that (for me holidays finish on the 3rd day and I'm back to work on the 4th LOL) so.... reference link here too!

Since the borders are opened, the Boss' driver from Hong Kong is coming over for a short break. We decided to meet up since we've only met once or twice over 3 years ago. We're going for a quick 飲茶 Yum Cha, or Dim Sum, and the Boss is paying (ha!) I should plan a trip to Hong Kong as well, just to know how Hong Kong looks now, but, I don't have any pressing matters that I have to attend to in Hong Kong.

This year I might go for the firecracker fair to have a look.... maybe... or maybe not... I don't know. I'm always so undecided about the firecracker fair. They say you burn firecracker to "chase/scare the bad luck away" but to me it's just "burning money." Hm........... To be decided.

One item off my bucket list LOL.

It was glorious!

I arrived early (6.30pm), in hopes that we'd get done with the dinner early enough to get home and walk the dogs. My internal target was to be home by 8.30pm.


Of course, the next time I look at my watch, it is 10pm already hahaha. Finally seeing a Glühwein, I ordered one to try. Didn't like it, and wasn't what I've been looking for (a Czech honey-wine kind of thing). My friend ordered a Hot Toddy, she didn't like it either.


We were originally a group of 4. One of them mentioned about her co-worker getting covid, so another friend (the scaredy cat) immediately said she's not going. So I invited another friend, and then that one friend that mentioned about a co-worker getting covid said she'd feel guilty if we somehow got covid through her (despite her confirming she was negative), so... it was just 3 of us.

The short ribs was great!


The sausage platter was impressive!


And the Cheese Fondue was amazing. I'm glad I went for it... at least once in my life. Though I think I won't be going again, not that it isn't good (it was very good) but, it's just not the kind of thing to be constantly eating.

Yes... this is going to be very eclectic, but my brain is going at a mile a minute LOL. There's a typhoon now and while on the map it shows it's nearer to Macau than Hong Kong, it seems like Hong Kong is making a big deal of it. We'll see. I had to call the attention of the office girls as they were all wishing for the typhoon to hit to get a free holiday and I just reamed them with "remember Typhoon Hato? Do you want that to happen again?" and that shut them right up. Anyway, this is not about the typhoon.

On Sunday we decided to try a Korean barbeque place that did takeaways. I had a full head of questions, how do you takeaway a korean barbeque?

In a nice thermos bag.


Everything in nice boxes. Charcoal in a tin foil tray, elevated so it doesn't burn the table cloth. It must have been some special charcoal as it was super easy to light up, didn't produce a lot of smoke, and when we were done we submerged the barbeque tray in water and the charcoal dissolved....? So yeah. Fun little gimmick, but tons of wastage, so we probably won't be ordering again.


Oh yeah I picked up the pottery stuff I made! Here's my supposed tea cup but turned into sake-cup size and filled with Irish Baileys instead LOL!


During the usual dog walk on Sunday, I saw a type of weed that had a puffy head, plucked one to play with Nutmeg. She had heaps of fun!


Whereas when I was in the bathroom preparing to shower, a peeping tom Harley was there giving me a look!


So... today that high-ranking colleague again invited us for lunch. I know, I preach about following rules yet he opened 2 bottles of red... it was pretty good too. I usually dislike red wine. This one's nice.


Oh, and I did want to write about this. I wrote in an earlier post about it being the 7th month and the gates to hell are opened and all that? This is the time when people would burn offerings. They just burn stuff in the streets, or at the site of accidents, or wherever, I suppose. All's better nowadays because there was a campaign a few years back urging people to put out the fire before leaving.


Though I think a new campaign needs to be designed - do not leave food out either. Some people use like packaged cookies and I suppose that's okay-ish, but those that leave fruits and cooked food out open... it's just a lure for rats, right? And maybe stray dogs .

oh boy. oh boy.

I'm jobless. LOL. Just joking! But I have no workplace to go to tomorrow.

Just. Something happened today. And they've quarantined off my office building. The lucky thing was, I just so happened to have gone to another property to look at the arrival of a big piece of... cargo. So when they sealed off my office building, I was out of it.

Guess I'm lucky that I wasn't stuck inside?

But tomorrow I'm out of an office location.

This is no fun. I really dislike working from home. oh gosh. My Mom's gonna be unbearable. The cleaner is coming tomorrow, so Mom is going to ask for this and that and this and that every 3 minutes.

I need to keep my ears to the news to know how long they are going to close off the building.

With the way the local government is handling this new wave of the covid pandemic, one would think the apocalypse is upon us. Just announced on the news - Macau has, to date, at time of writing, 451 confirmed cases since February 2020. That of course, doesn't sound much, but up until last week or so, it was an accumulated total of less than 90 confirmed cases. The sudden jump is indeed a little scary, but the countermeasures the government has taken has also been crazy.

I've now done 3 PCR tests, and 3 self-home tests. On 1-July, they are going to implement more requirements.

So, at the other side project I work for, we have an "off-site" office that is located in a property that is considered a "gaming venue". The government had mandated that "gaming venues" would require for the staff to have a within-48hours negative PCR test result, and a daily rapid antigen test with negative result.

This off-site office, I had already since 2 months ago asked if they could make arrangements to relocate the staff (there's like, some 10 or so staff left in that office, and it's a big space). We were paying a lot in rent, cleaning, and overheads, which would have been fine if the office were full, but with just 10 staff, it really wasn't ideal. However, since these expenses fell to my department, nobody felt the urgency to relocate the people.

So now with this new government mandate, I pushed again, but asked directly at the management. "Since the staff will have to do these paid tests and home tests, will the company reimburse these expenses to them or are staff expected to bear these themselves?"

They were still hemming and hawing saying there's no place to relocate the staff to. They agreed that these expenses should be covered by the company, but seemed reluctant to actually pay for these... Then my boss called me and asked me if the old office is still available. "Nah, you asked us to move out, we moved out, and the office has been reinstated to bare shell status". But then I added, "oh, but that I know of, in this-and-this department, they actually do have spare desk space, but they were hoarding it because they weren't sure if their staff needed to work in 2 offices. Since this is a temporary measure, I think we should all make the effort. Boss, don't tell them I told you this."

So my Boss made an off-hand request that "those 10 staff should be relocated". Oh wow. Arrangement confirmed within one morning, those bastards. So no more need to expect to make those test expenses. It means that in future if I need to put my foot down on anything, I'd have to ask my Boss to say that.

But all joking aside, this is going to be tough... not just paying for the tests, but for daily getting stabbed up through the nose, ugh.

However, if this goes on, it's true, Macau won't die because of the pandemic, instead, Macau will die because of the economic atrophy. Restaurants can only serve takeaways, salons, gyms, public parks, facilities, all closed. Banks, government offices, all closed. Banks! BANKS!

My workplace has also implemented "use up your paid time off" scheme and "use up your future paid time off" as well. But still expect us to work from home. Huh. I'm just going back to the office every day, maybe leaving a little earlier than usual. There's no one in the office anyway, so there are no crowds in the office. My Boss still expects me to work at home anyway. And I can't work from home... if my Mom sees me, she automatically thinks I'm free so wants me to do this and that and that and this and breaking my concentration when I'm doing some spreadsheets or studying figures. So really. I really dislike work from home.... maybe if I lived alone, then I'd enjoy it better.

I'm still lucky my company is still giving out the bonus this year. Technically, this bonus they are giving out is last year's annual bonus... they just cut it in half and "spread it out" to give out twice a year. This will probably be the last bonus we are getting, because, there's just no business going on. In fact, if it were just me, I'd understand if there's no bonus now. But the people of Macau are so coddled and entitled. It's ridiculous. "No bonus? Send in a complaint to the Labour Department! The government should give us the difference!"

(an oversimplified summary but a summary nonetheless: Macau's government is mostly, say 80%? Funded by the casino gaming tax. Got a good fat wallet now. But if casinos have no business and no money, the government eventually will have no money too.)

It's Sunday, so it's the family lunch day. One of my cousins decided to go visit a stationary store that's actually very near my home, but it's just off by another way (that goes further away from the city center) so I don't normall go that way. My friend had told me about it before, and I had thought about visiting this stationary shop before, but I just never got around to it.

I figured since my cousin has decided to make the trip there, I should just go ahead with her, as knowing myself so well, I'm sure I'd probably forget about it and never go there if left to my own devices LOL.


And... it was an amazing little shop! It's SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY kind of amazing. All those ink! Fountain pen ink! Stamp pads and stamping inks! STICKERS! Wax for sealing letters! I sunk a good amount of money on postcards (Postcrossing, here I come!). And then there was a pretty nifty book. I did say I've got too many books, but I feel like this is the kind of book that is actually good for collecting and using.


You read that right, that's using, not reading. This is an adventure book. As it's written by a Japanese author, this book is trilingual: English, Chinese, and Japanese. Apparently, I'm to one day hang around town with the book and follow the prompts and see where I end up - even though I'm local. I suppose it would be interesting to do this in a place where you're visiting, but I'd be worried about getting lost.


Anyway, after this, we went along that street down and passed by a small little shop that's got this vegan or go green movement. I got myself this chocolate hazelnut spread. So, practically a home-made Nutella thing. It was a little too liquid, so I mixed it up some more and put it into the fridge and will see how it does later. Taste-wise though it was good, not as sweet as Nutella, so that's a plus!


Now I'm just home resting and this snuggle bug is wanting company. Okay, you kind lie down here quietly with me. And there was a jingle of keys, and my Sis comes back home, and there he goes flying out to greet her. Bye doggie. LOL!